Linguist ’sPreservation Kit Has New Digital Tools (fwd link)

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SCIENTIST AT WORK: TUCKER CHILDS
Linguist’s Preservation Kit Has New Digital Tools

By CHRIS NICHOLSON
Published: July 27, 2009

TEI, Sierra Leone — Jogue, yipe, simoi are three short words for foods in Kim, a
language in Sierra Leone that Tucker Childs has been trying, for the past three
years, to write down, record and understand.

Kim is a dying language, and Dr. Childs a field linguist. From his base here in
Tei, a small fishing village on the Waanje River, he canoes up the narrow
waterways that cut across the river’s floodplain, and hikes a few miles inland,
to where the last Kim communities remain. Based on recordings taken there, he
has devised an alphabet and compiled a dictionary and is finishing a book on
the grammar.

Africa has about 2,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages. Many are still unwritten,
some have yet to be named and many will probably disappear. For centuries,
social and economic incentives have been working against Kim and in favor of
Mende, a language used widely in the region, until finally, Dr. Childs
speculates, the Kim language has been pushed to the verge of extinction.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/science/28prof.html?_r=1